


Departure

by hisen



Category: Naruto
Genre: Betrayal, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Parent Death, Pre-Canon, loss of parent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisen/pseuds/hisen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three of the biggest losses in Kakashi's early life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Three of the major losses in Kakashi's life. Number one: his mother._
> 
> Part of my table on [](http://parthenon.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**parthenon**](http://parthenon.dreamwidth.org/) , for Melpomene: Tragedy.
> 
> This chapter is for prompt 7: Betrayed by Family. Slight AU in regards to what happened to Kakashi's mother.
> 
> Disclaimer: All copyrighted settings and characters belong to their respective owners. I gain no profit from this.

It was morning, and the Hatake compound was silent. Kakashi had woken up at dawn and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. He knew it was too early to wake his parents, but the sun was now fully up as he watched dragonflies hover over the surface of the pound. Brushing the dirt off himself as he got up, he slipped back silently, for a three year old at least, into the house. He checked the storage room again, and found it the same as he had an hour before. His father’s pack was there but his mother’s was gone. She hadn’t told him that she had a mission the night before, but he knew that sometimes people got called away in the night.

Shutting the door as he left the room, he made his way to the main bedroom. He hesitated, hand resting on the door, but the sun had fully risen and that meant that his father should be awake. He slid the door open enough to enter the room and shut it behind him. He let his eyes alight to the dark before he moved.

He hadn’t woken up. His father was a very light sleeper; the door opening should have been enough to wake him. He flared his charka, the way he’d been taught to in case he needed to alert his presence to adults when they couldn’t see him. When after a minute his father didn’t suddenly snap up awake, he moved to the futon, and despite all the warnings his mother had given him, shook him.

In a second he found himself pinned to the ground, kunai at his throat, and the only reason he hadn’t screamed was because there hadn’t been enough time to.

The kunai was taken away from his throat and the weight pining him down moved as his father got up, wobbling slightly, and looked down at him.

“Kakashi?” He sounded groggy but his eyes were still sharp, assessing the situation as Kakashi was still frozen to the tatami. He knew his father could be scary but he’d never seen him like that before, killing intent in his eyes for a second before he recognised his mystery assailant as his son.

“I-I…” His father had stabilised now, and with a sigh he scooped Kakashi up from the ground. Kakashi didn’t resist and just buried his head in his father’s shoulder, trying to equalise the man who had just nearly stabbed him with his loving but stern father.

“I’m sorry I scared you Kakashi.” He felt the rumble of his father’s voice as much as he heard it. A calloused hand moved from his back to his head, stroking his hair. “But that’s why your mother said…” Suddenly he froze, and Kakashi moved his head from his shoulder to look at his face. “Where’s your mother?”

“Pack gone.”

“Are you sure?” Kakashi wanted to scowl in response to this insult to his truthfulness, but from the tone of his father’s voice he thought better of it and just nodded. His father muttered something under his breath as he marched out of the bedroom, putting Kakashi down in the hallway. “I need to go into the village. You’ll stay here and keep out of trouble.” On a normal day he would have argued that he didn’t get into trouble, but today he just nodded again, his father was relying on him. “Good boy.” He went back into the bedroom to change; Kakashi waited outside and then watched his father leave.

Normally he would have taken this as a chance to explore, to look through the scrolls he wasn’t allowed to touch, even though he couldn’t read them. Or maybe practice with a spare kunai that his mother said he was absolutely not to touch and that his father said he was to leave alone unless he was there or else he’d pick up bad handling habits. But today he felt too anxious and instead paced around, checking every now and again to see if his mother had returned, with her pack back in the storage room.

His father hadn’t known that she was away. But he always knew when she was away on a mission because they always told each other, even if they had to wake each other up in the middle of the night. So she wasn’t on a mission. But if his mother wasn’t on a mission, where would she have gone with her pack? She didn’t need it anywhere else. His mind drew a blank. There was no other reason for taking a pack apart from going on a mission, so she must be on a mission, but…

He was still thinking in circles when his father returned. He sat down on the porch, and didn’t say anything as Kakashi scooted up to him. He ruffled Kakashi’s hair distractedly but that was it. He leant against his father, and felt himself drift off, his dawn rising finally catching up with him.

When he woke up, the sun was lower in the sky, he was lying across the porch with a blanket over him, and his father was gone. He heard voices from inside and got up, dropping the blanket on the ground as headed towards the voices, one of which was definitely his father.

He slid the door open and found the Sandaime sitting at the uncovered kotatsu. The conversation stopped as he felt himself flush a little and he bowed.

“Kakashi.” He looked at his father, who gestured at the mat next to him, and Kakashi sat down on it in seiza.

“Sakumo?”

“He’ll have to find out sometime, Hokage-sama. I’d rather it was now than from some kid when he goes to the Academy.” The Sandaime sighed but didn’t argue with Sakumo.

“As I said, she was last seen going over the border, towards Kusa. However she told the landlady of the inn near the border that her final destination wasn’t Kusa. She also left an envelope addressed to me with the landlady. There were two letters inside, one addressed to me and the village at large, and the other…” he slid the letter across the table, and his father picked it up. Kakashi stared at the table in front of him as he opened the letter. There was only the rustle of paper and the sound of his own breathing as his father read the letter.

“I can’t believe it.”

“She said that she couldn’t tolerate being a weapon of war any longer.” Kakashi saw his father slide the letter across the table to the Sandaime to read, but he was looking away from Kakashi.

“Well,” he commented once he had finished reading, Kakashi trying not to stare at him too much, still amazed that the Hokage was in his home but also aware that this probably meant something was deeply wrong. “This explains what I didn’t understand.”

“Why she said that but went to Iwa.” The Hokage nodded.

“Do you want me to…?”

“Please.” Kakashi’s sense of dread grew as he heard the choke of his father’s voice and the Sandaime put a finger to the letter and it caught alight, the ashes falling onto the table.

“I’m sorry, we should have been able to stop her…” His father waved a hand at the Hokage, dismissing his apology, a highly inappropriate gesture towards his leader and superior but the Hokage didn’t seem to be offended. His other hand was covering his face.

“Nobody could have stopped her. She must have been planning for a long time, for it to work so perfectly. She even managed to get a drug that knocked me out.”

“I can grant you some leave, not very long but…”

“No. There’ll be enough doubt about me without adding that.”

“I think you are underestimating how much this village trusts you, but I understand. The offer still stands in case you changed your mind.” The Hokage got up, nodded to both of them, Kakashi dipped his head but his father didn’t respond as he left. Once he had left the room Kakashi crawled over to his father and put his hands on his leg, trying to get his attention. He knew something had happened to his mother but he didn’t know what, they had tried to stop her from doing something but he didn’t know what it was or why she was doing it.

“Dad?” His father took a deep breath, as if he was trying not to cry, and took the hand away from his face to look at his son.

“Your mother has left.” Kakashi frowned; this didn’t make sense since his mother had left before, sometimes the missions had taken weeks, and she’d always come back. Why would this upset his father so much?

“For how long?”

“For…for ever.”

“What?” People didn’t leave forever, that didn’t happen. They always came back, without fail, unless they died but his mother wasn’t dead, so she must be coming back. She always came back.

“She’s betrayed the village and gone to another one. She’s left the village, she’s left us.”

“No…but…” Kakashi, even at his age, knew that betraying their village was the worst thing a shinobi could do. Only terrible, heartless, evil people betrayed their villages. His mother was not a terrible heartless person; she was wonderful and perfect and would never do that. She would never leave him forever. “But she can’t! She can’t leave!” His father looked away, and it hit Kakashi that she really had left, that she’d gone and left him behind, and that he would probably never see her again.

He could feel tears running down his face and he couldn’t stop them, even when he flung himself at his father and his father just held onto him, burying his face in Kakashi’s hair. He called for her, as if that would bring her back, that she’d stop his crying just like she always did, but she didn’t appear. It was just the two of them, holding on like they were the last two people on the planet. It wasn’t until he was, at last, able to stop crying that he felt that his hair was wet, and his father finally spoke.

“It’s okay. We still have each other.” He didn’t let go of Kakashi as he got up, balancing the boy on his hip as he did. Kakashi looked up at his father, with tears still in his eyes, and suddenly felt scared that he would leave him too, and that he’d have no parents at all. “Hmm?” His father lifted him up again and looked at him questioningly. Kakashi shut his eyes to avoid that look.

“Don’t go too.”

“I swear I won’t. I won’t leave you.” It was the kind of foolish promise a shinobi shouldn’t have made but Sakumo couldn’t help himself. He wouldn’t willingly leave his son like his wife had willingly left them, who had replaced him with someone else before she’d even left the village.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just putting a potential trigger warning for suicide here.  
>  _Three of the major losses in Kakashi's life. Number two: his father._
> 
> Part of my table on [](http://parthenon.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**parthenon**](http://parthenon.dreamwidth.org/) , for Melpomene: Tragedy. This chapter is for prompt 2: Death of Family. Slight AU in regards to what happened to Kakashi's mother.
> 
> Disclaimer: All copyrighted settings and characters belong to their respective owners. I gain no profit from this.

The sky was clear but the wind was still strong, the ground was damp with rain and the tree where Team Minato met had been knocked over during the night. It wasn’t a surprise that such a strong storm had knocked over an old tree that was rotten at its core. It was an ominous sign if you believed in that sort of thing, but Minato didn’t. If a ninja looked everywhere for his impending death he was sure to find it prematurely. 

His only student was late. It wasn’t normal for Kakashi to be late but it had happened before, and it’d been more often in the past few months. It wasn’t enough in itself to worry him. The mission they’d got was simple enough, more to test Kakashi than one only he could do. But they needed to set out to the edge of Fire Country soon, and Minato had already been waiting for nearly an hour. 

The hour passed. Genin teams went by, arguing and showing off, not noticing Minato waiting up in the leaves though the jounin-senseis, some of them still half-asleep, acknowledged Minato. Kakashi didn’t appear. Minato focused on the seal he’d left near the Hatake compound (not in it, Sakumo’s wards would have destroyed it within minutes) and teleported. He went to the gate and put his hand against it, preparing to reach out against the wards as he pushed, but the gate opened without any resistance. The wards were gone, and that was an ominous sign for Minato. 

He cautiously entered and checked for outsiders with a single finger to the ground. No outsiders or Sakumo. If he was away on a mission he would have strengthened the wards, not released them. He could sense Kakashi’s presence but it was faint and he headed towards it, starting to mentally prepare for the worst. An ambush, with the attackers already gone, Sakumo dead and Kakashi slowly bleeding out. It was possible even in the relative security of the village, growing up in war had taught him that. Even the best protected houses, with the tightest security could be breached if someone wanted to get in badly enough. Sakumo had earned himself enough enemies and even if the village had turned on him, he was regarded enough by outsiders for another village to want him dead. 

He slid the door to the main room open, the stillness of the compound making him fear that the worst had happened as he stepped into the room.

“Kakashi?” He heard movement and as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw Kakashi, curled up in the centre of the room next to a body, still alive. As Minato walked over he woke up, and watched him as he crouched down to check the body next to him and cursed. Kakashi opened his mouth to say something, mask down to his chin, but no words came out. 

Minato only glanced over Sakumo’s body, enough to see that the wound on his stomach was self inflicted, before looking back at Kakashi. He wiped some of the blood off his student’s face (he didn’t want to know how that had got there) and lifted him up. Normally Kakashi would have protested, argued that he was too old to be carried around but this time he said nothing and kept his arms around his sensei’s shoulders as he slung him onto his back.

“Sensei, I…” Kakashi’s voice trailed off, and Minato didn’t push further. There would be a time for questions but it was not now. 

~

The words wouldn’t come. He’d never been that comfortable with words, didn’t trust them – his mother said she loved him but had left anyway, his father said he’d never leave him but he was gone. His silence had grown over the past year, terrified of saying the wrong word, the wrong thing, while trying to express how much he still loved him and trying to hide how ashamed he was of his father, but now he could barely use them at all. He would sit at the table as Kushina dished up meals, arguing and laughing with Minato, nothing like the hazy arguments he remembered before she’d betrayed them, and the only words he could get to come out was the thanks for the food. 

Minato had tried to get him to open up when Kushina wasn’t there, her caring but overbearing presence making him clam up even more, but the words he wanted to say – “I miss him, I feel guilty because I was ashamed, it’s my fault, it’s always my fault” – didn’t come out of his mouth. He knew what question his sensei really wanted to ask him, but he couldn’t answer it. He had known that he was dead as soon as he had seen him of course; he knew what a dead body looked like. But he hadn’t wanted to leave him alone. So he stared at his feet and Minato sighed and ruffled his hair, letting him know that it was okay, even though it wasn’t. 

Kakashi stayed with them though he could have gone back to the compound, now that everything had been cleaned away (unlike his dreams, where the blood didn’t go away, spreading until it had stained the whole house red). He didn’t want to be alone again even if he couldn’t get the words out to say it. 

If Minato had noticed that he was summoning Pakkun more than it was necessary to at the moment, he didn’t say anything.

~

“Kid.” Pakkun motioned for Kakashi to stop, his arms around the pack that Minato had sent him back to their room in the inn they were staying in to get. Kakashi stopped and focused his hearing on what Pakkun had heard in the room where Minato was talking to another squad from Konoha, on their way back to the village from Iwa.

“Are you sure?” He heard Minato ask. 

“Yes, heard it from the medic-nin who was there when it happened, nearly a year ago now. He delivered that baby –a boy too – but the mother, well…I guess it’s not a surprise, the other one nearly killed her.”

“And the father?”

“Apparently he isn’t too cut up, was already starting to lose interest – she wasn’t so interesting to him once he’d won her from Sakumo I heard. Makes you wonder why she even did…”

Kakashi dropped the pack and the thump alerted the nins in the room to his return. The four looked out of the doorway, and at Kakashi. Minato took one look at his face before picking the pack up, leading Kakashi back upstairs, ignoring the curious stares of the other squad, with Pakkun at their heels. Minato noticed how Kakashi was shaking as he guided him into the room, shutting the door behind them as Pakkun scooted up to Kakashi once Minato had sat him on the tatami matting. 

“You knew.” His voice broke as he stared at his feet; desperately not looking at his sensei who he was sure had sympathy in his blue eyes. 

“I knew that she had gone over to Iwa, but…” Kakashi shook his head; of course he’d known that, everyone knew that he was the son of a traitor. 

“You knew that she replaced us.” 

_Us._

He started to cry, heard his sensei knee down on the tatami but didn’t look at him, didn’t want to be touched by him even though that was what Minato would want to do. Pakkun climbed into his lap and he hugged him instead, it was okay for a ninja to hug his summon, it wasn’t weak to rely on someone who you signed a contract with like it was to let his sensei hug him. 

He wondered if his father had known too. Maybe that was why it’d happened, why he had decided it wasn’t worth living any longer with it on top of the scorn of the village. Maybe that had been why he hadn’t been able to leave the body. Everyone had abandoned him, replaced him, even his own son who looked enough like his deserting wife that he’d started to wear a mask to hide it away, to hide from curious and scorning villagers. He hadn’t been able to leave him again. 

When he had stopped crying, the build-up of several months, Minato was hopeful that this might be the start of a healing process, with Kakashi on his way to functioning normally again. Kakashi, however, made a decision.

No emotions. Rule 25 existed for a reason, and if he followed the rules, if he didn’t let his heart rule his head like they had, he’d be okay. He would survive and make up for those failures by being a model shinobi. 

Kakashi dismissed Pakkun as he removed him from his lap, and got up, Minato standing up from the mat too. If Minato had expected the words that had been stuck in Kakashi’s throat for so long to finally come out, he was disappointed. Kakashi looked at him, pulling his mask back up, giving him a head start on hiding his emotions, and stated,

“We have a mission to do, sensei.” 

And the mission had to come first.


End file.
